I don't know if the space station was worth it or not, but I agree with you strongly on the engineering point.

Why do we only look at the space station from a basic science output perspective? Can we not look at it from the perspective of what kind of engineering achievement it is to have constructed this giant ass thing in ORBIT?

I would be shocked if the construction of the space station didn't teach us a lot about what it takes to build structures in space and the challenges that can come up, and that these experiences will be invaluable for future space exploration.

Actually I think the pseudo retro look is a part of its appeal.

Also, as the fidelity of the world around you increases it places increasing demands on the realism and look of your own creations. Because the world looks really simple and stylized, it's much easier for people who aren't super artistic to create something that can look quite good. Your imagination fills in all the gaps for you.

There were no competitors for IE back then and the entire market stagnated under ie 6. Thank god for competition, from Microsoft, Google or otherwise.

I'm pretty sure it's because XP does not have the windowing manager Vista / 7 has, which turns the entire desktop into a Direct 3d rendering surface

The GDI / GDI+ interfaces that run in XP cannot take advantage of GPU acceleration, period.

Kind of an interesting note, I just recently updated Firefox to the latest version, and for some reason the latest update wanted me to restart my computer.

I didn't read it wrong, it wasn't restart the browser, it was restart the computer.

Why would you not switch to chrome? Is it because of certain addons?

I was a long time firefox user before switching to Chrome. I still occasionally use firefox due to firebug + other addons, but after using Chrome for a while firefox just feels sluggish as hell.

Bah, I just checked and it looks like creative no longer sells the card that I have, and they don't have anything really comparable

I second this. Soundblaster cards, as crappy as Creative is, have good jack support. I have a Xi-Fi platinum (with the front panel headers) and it has line in jacks, multiple microphone jacks, optical in / optical out etc. I don't know what their cards are like these days but I'm sure they'll have one with the RCA jacks.

Also I just want to say the RCA type dual line in jacks have never been popular on sound cards as far as I know

Everyone in the mainland knows that Hong Kong is subject to different laws, this is not a mystery to them, and nobody's raised a fuss yet.

I certainly see a benefit to being able to do things with a pen, mostly for taking notes in class etc.

Typing your notes on a word processor just doesn't give you the same amount of freedom to write in formulas, circle important concepts, doodle, etc.

I agree with everything you said except the 'speed' part.

Eclipse in my experience is consistently faster than Netbeans (at least for small projects, any big project I do in Netbeans).